"I hear the same stories again and again. Estimates treated as promises. Plans turned into contracts. Teams punished for being wrong rather than rewarded for learning. Given experiences like those, it's understandable that many teams conclude the solution is to eliminate estimating and planning altogether. I think that's a mistake. Estimating and planning still matter-not because the future is predictable, but because it isn't. They matter because teams and organizations still have to make decisions about what to work on"
"You're estimating cost, value, risk, or effort-even if you never put a number on it. Over the years, I've worked with teams who proudly claimed they "don't estimate," only to watch them make decisions based on unspoken assumptions about size and difficulty. The estimates were still there; they were just invisible and unexamined. The real choice isn't whether to estimate. It's whether estimates are explicit or implicit, discussed or denied."
Many agile practitioners carry scars from being forced to turn estimates into promises and plans into contracts. Given punitive responses to inaccurate estimates, some teams abandon estimating — a mistaken choice. Estimating and planning remain necessary because uncertainty requires decisions about work, deferral, and acceptable risks. Choosing one piece of work over another inherently involves estimating cost, value, risk, or effort, even without numbers. Explicit estimates create transparency while implicit estimates hide unexamined assumptions. In healthy agile environments, estimates support decisions rather than function as accuracy tests that punish misses.
Read at Mountaingoatsoftware
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]